Migration Flows and Intra-Industry Trade Adjustments

In this paper we analyse the link between trade and migration. Focusing on the experience of Spain, we relate a marginal index of intra-industry trade to the stock of foreign workers—classified according to their country of origin and their situation in the Spanish labour market. We focus on the possibility that existing networks of foreign workers and their connections with their countries of origin could stimulate trade with the host country. Our results show a significant impact of the number of immigrants with work permits on intra-industry trade adjustment. However, this impact being positive or negative depends on whether foreign workers are employees or self-employed, the duration of the work permits and the type of job they occupy. JEL no. F10, F14, F15, F22     

The EU Budget and the CAP: An Agenda for the Review?

The promised review of the EU Budget in 2008 offers an opportunity to bring CAP financing into line with logic, justice and the rest of EU policy. Currently, the CAP is unique amongst European policies in being both mandatory and requiring 100 per cent financing by the EU budget. While this made good sense at the policy's inception, it is now an obsolete anachronism. A sensible and defensible agenda for financial reform, which is all that is on the reform agenda at present, is to make the EU budget responsible for only a fraction (say 25 per cent) of the costs of the current CAP, instead of the present 100 per cent. This would bring CAP financing into line with other EU policies, and make member states separately responsible for the balance for their own farmers, as they so wish, up to the CAP budgetary ceiling already agreed. Any resulting competition between member states in the extent and means by which they continue (or not) to support farmers through direct payments would be controlled through EU Competition and single market policies. Such competition would also provide a good opportunity for experiments with policy development, to the advantage of all, since different policies are required for the different stages of development and different local conditions now evident within the EU.     

Encouraging Tutorial Attendance at University Did Not Improve Performance

When tertiary education is subsidised the cost of poor student performance in university subjects falls not only on the individual student but also on society in general. Society therefore has an interest in promoting student performance. There is evidence in the literature that absenteeism from university classes is widespread and that absenteeism adversely affects student performance. In this paper I describe an incentive scheme that increased attendance of business and economics students in an introductory statistics subject at a typical Australian university. Like other authors I find a strong positive association between attendance and academic performance, both in the presence and absence of the scheme. However, there is no evidence that the incentive scheme caused student performance to improve. Although students attended more classes they did not perform better than students in the previous year's class who had the same observable characteristics and attendance levels but who were not exposed to the scheme.     

Smuggling and Bhagwati's Nonequivalence Between Tariffs and Quotas

The authors extend Professor Bhagwati's analysis about the nonequivalence between trade policy instruments when domestic production is monopolized and the terms of trade are endogenous, by allowing for smuggling. They show that the dominance of the ad valorem tariff over the quota is not robust. Tariffication can lower welfare even when the level of illegal imports is quite small. However, tariffication with a specific tariff is always beneficial because the specific tariff dominates the ad valorem tariff and the quota with or without smuggling. Smuggling (or the threat) also tends to lower the second–best tariff/quota, and increases welfare when imports are restricted by a quota, but lowers it under a tariff.     

Applying a nine cell financial analysis model to home health care

A nine-cell financial analysis model is used to evaluate the effectiveness of strategies on the economic performance of a home health care agency. Strategies associated with the drivers of economic performance are discussed: volume, unit price, unit costs of resources applied, and quantity of resources applied.     

Accounting aggregation: User preferences and decision making

This experiment tests the effects of alternative aggregations of accounting data in a simulated portfolio task. Certain entropy-based aggregation criteria were used to prepare differentially aggregated financial statements for use in the task. Subjects made allocations of initial edowments between hypothetical firms, disclosed confidence in their allocation decisions and reported on specific characteristics of the financial statements. Differences in reported usefulness of statement sets furnished were found to be associated strongly with measured information content. The results also provide limited evidence that decisions and judgments of subjects were affected by the information content of the accounting aggregations provided.